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Spinball Whizzer: General Discussion

It did experience a lot of downtime last season so it would make sense. It was closed for a full day on one of my visits, one of my cousin's visits and I also believe it was down all day in a TPW vlog as well.
 
Spinball as a ride is ok, it has a place in the park for a while as its 1.2m restriction caters well for the whole family, it is one of the issues with 1.4m thrill machines as whilst they are great they don't cater well for familys, Family thrill I think is a must for all the merlin parks in the UK who for to long have installed to many 1.4m coasters… a quality ride can be found with lower more accommodating coasters. Anyhow back to spinball without merlin telling us, A part may have been needed with a delivery time frame of say 2 months due to manufacturing and shipping.
 
Connor98 said:
A little change in direction (no pun intended) but do people think Spinball has much more of a life at the park? I wouldn’t imagine it’s anywhere near it’s last legs, but if project horizon is another family thrill coaster then would it be worth towers looking at the space spinball occupies for a CBeebies land expansion or even an event/show space would be fantastic in that area.
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What if Spinball IS the Project Horizon coaster :tearsofjoy:
:tearsofjoy:
 
Would be interesting to know exactly what they’ve changed. I’ve heard it’s something to do with its programming/computer system which should hopefully make a big difference to its reliability!. Glad to see it open myself as I find it a fun coaster and something very different from other rides on the park, it still attracts pretty hefty queues at times (obviously partly due to its location).
 
Just as an aside, as the maintenance that delayed Spinball's start to the season is now complete, we now don't need a constant open/closed commentary here in the topic. If you'd like to discuss day to day operations/queue times, then we have dedicated topics for that. Thanks :).
 
Rob said:
They've changed/upgraded the PLC. So like any new computer system, there will initially be bugs, but hopefully longer term it should improve reliability.
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Impressed they can get parts, do we know who’s doing the work? (Fairfield/Garmendale/in house/manufacturer/other?)

Depends on the system. Assuming Rockwell to Rockwell it can be reasonably straight forward. Siemens S7-400 to 1500 can be a little more involved.

Nonetheless thorough testing will still be needed after. I’d be intrigued to know how much on site techs would get involved with on site software,
I imagine it’s kept to a minimum bar fault finding.

I imagine there’s a few systems at AT due this around this period (RMT/Rapids/Nemesis/Duel)

Control systems pushing 20 years plus in a safety environment, will be getting close to replacement time.

Problem is, as all controls engineers will tell you, keep rubbish sensors providing unreliable inputs and things won’t improve. Fixing those is more involved.
 
Ash said:
Control systems pushing 20 years plus in a safety environment, will be getting close to replacement time.
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Why? I don't recall this happening on any of the other roller coasters which passed that anniversary... planes famously run with the stuff they're built with leading to all those 'BA 747s still running Windows 3.1' style stories.
 
I've certainly operated a number of coasters older then Spinball running their original PLCs.

What is it about age that makes them less reliable ? We have infrastructure / technology at work that is older than me that we don't change in fear of breaking it, it just keeps going otherwise.
 
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